Three Indian Americans named winners of EY regional mid-west competition

CHICAGO (Diya TV) — Three Indian Americans — Sonny Kakar, Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal — have been named winners in the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year regional competitions.

Kakar, chief executive officer at Fairfax, Va.-based Sevatec, won in the government services category. He is also the founder and chairman of the company. Kaka additionally serves as the president and executive director of the SevaTruck Foundation.

Prior to founding Sevatec in 2003, the University of Maryland graduate served as the vice president of capitol area operations at Karta Technologies Inc., environmental engineer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and sales manager at Capital Imports Ltd.

Shah and Agarwal are both executives at Chicago, Ill.-based ContextMedia with Shah serving as the founder and CEO and Agarwal as the co-founder and president.

The latter duo were named winners in the category of business services.

Shah, who serves on the board of numerous companies, co-founded the personal venture investment firm, Jumpstart Ventures. This in addition to his founding of the Northwestern University publication, NBR, from where he graduated.

Agarwal co-founded Jumpstart alongside Shah, and she also serves as a partner of SVP Chicago and a board member of OneGoal, Chicago Children’s Choir and Urban Alliance. She is additionally a leadership council member at the Chicago Public Education Fund, a committee member at the Economic Club of Chicago, and a mentor at Blueprint Health LLC.

As regional winners, the three are eligible for consideration in Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year national program. The national winner will be named Nov. 19 in Palm Springs, Calif.

The winner of the national program then will have the chance to compete in the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year in Monaco in June 2017.